Times Tables Rock Stars

Teacher Overview

World famous rock musicians are the best at what they do because they've spent hours practising guitar chords, writing music or playing on the drums. It's just the same with times tables – all Times Table Rock Stars need to practise and practise and practise.

It's essential that your child does a little bit of times table practice every night. In my experience, short bursts of daily practise are more effective than spending hours once a week.

Teacher Review

The app allows the children to create a rock star character and then practise their times tables and the corresponding division facts – they are rewarded with ‘money’ and can ‘buy’ things for their rock star. They can see their own progress and compare themselves to other users.

Learning your times tables is very important and is one of the most important skills when it comes to the SATs tests to be able to keep up with the number of questions that have to be answered.

This is a fun and competitive game that children can play free of charge to practice their tables. It is completely safe to use but has all the fun of competing against the clock and others. As the children use it they get coins and they can upgrade the character they play as.

Children can play single or multiplayer games and work their way through the ranks of Busker, Rock Star and Rock Legend, depending on how quickly and accurately they can answer the questions. The teacher can select which times tables are focused on each week, but there is a 20-week schedule that can be used as a guide. There are lots of printable resources, too.

Times Table Rock Stars programme has one aim - to boost times table recall speeds.

Game Modes

Single Player

Garage - the questions will only come from the times tables the teacher has set for the week. As pupils start to answer questions, TT Rock Stars works out which facts they take longer on and will give them more of these questions to answer. The Garage is best for getting quicker at a few facts. Players get 10 coins per question.

Studio - the questions in the Studio can be anything from 1×1 up to 12×12.

TT Rock Stars calculates each the mean speed from their last 10 games in the Studio and translates into a Rock Status. They earn 1 coin per question and the Studio is the place for them to set their best time across all the tables.

Multiplayer

Rock Arena - The Arena allows players to compete against all other members of their Band (their Bandmates would need to join the same game in order to compete together). A new Arena game starts every 15 seconds and once the clock starts they race to answer more questions than the others. In the Arena, questions will only come from the times tables the teacher has set for the week, similar to the Garage. They earn 1 coin per correct answer.

Rock Festival - The Rock Festival games are open to players from around the world. Like the Arena, there is no limit to the number of players who can join a game; however, unlike the Arena, questions are selected at random from 1×1 to 12×12. Pupils might choose the Rock Festival if they were playing at home (and therefore couldn't easily synchronise playing against a classmate) or wanted to compete against others not in their Band. They earn 1 coin per correct answer.

Benefits of Times Table Rock Stars

Incorrect answers are always immediately corrected in front of the pupil so that they start to associate the correct answer to every question.

The clever code behind the scenes works out which times tables facts each pupil is consistently taking longer to answer and then it gradually starts to present these facts more frequently until pupils have mastered them.

It will also ask related division questions 20% of the time in order to reinforce division facts

Safeguarding

Screenshots

Developer Description

Times Tables Rock Stars is a carefully sequenced programme of daily times tables practice aimed at schools. Each week concentrates on a different times table, with a recommended consolidation week for rehearsing the tables that have recently been practiced every third week or so.

This format has very successfully boosted times tables recall speed for hundreds of pupils over the last 5 years at King Solomon Academy, the school in which it was created. Now it is used in over 3000 schools worldwide - both primary and secondary - by 250,000 learners young and not so young.

Please note that in order to log in and play you need to have a subscription to Times Tables Rock Stars and have purchased the Mobile apps bolt-on.